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In Which Matters Come to a Head
After taking his leave of Julia, Pickett made his way to Petticoat Lane, where he scanned the stalls of secondhand clothing in search of a gown suitable for an aristocratic female. On its face, this was not the impossible quest it might have seemed, since he had learned during his investigation of Lord Fieldhurst’s murder—an investigation that, in his absence, had obviously not gone well for that gentleman’s widow—that ladies of Julia’s class frequently bestowed their castoff clothing on their maids, to wear or to sell as they saw fit. However, when one added the further requirement that this gown must be long enough to reach the ankles of a “lady” who stood six feet three inches barefooted, the difficulty increased exponentially.
He discovered one possibility in a dark green garment which Julia—at least, the Julia he knew—would never have been caught dead in (bad choice of words, but he wouldn’t let himself think of that) but which possessed the advantage of appearing rather longer than most of the other gowns on offer. He held it up to his chest experimentally, then looked down at the length of leg clearly visible beneath its hem—and looked up again to discover the proprietress and two of her female customers regarding him warily.
“It’s for my sister,” he said, feeling some explanation was called for. “She’s very tall.” Seeing they did not appear convinced, he added, “We’re twins.”
The proprietress merely shrugged. “It’s your money, ducks.”
Actually, it was Julia’s money, but Pickett was not inclined to waste time in correcting this mistaken assumption. He tossed the gown over his arm and turned his attention to the selection of a mob cap. If nothing else, he reasoned, he could recount this misunderstanding to her upon his return to Newgate, and if he was lucky, he would see her smile one more time before he took her place on the scaffold...
But he would think about that later. For now, he eyed a brown checked waistcoat and a slightly worn-looking olive-green tailcoat, and wondered wistfully if there might be enough money left over for him to at least make himself presentable. Presentable for what? he challenged his own wayward thoughts. Even if he managed to survive the execution, it wasn’t as if he could court his wife all over again. He had even less to offer her now than he’d had before. He had no money, he had no position—he didn’t even have a name, for he didn’t really exist.
With this lowering thought, he paid for the gown and mobcap, assured the proprietress (who still looked askance at him) that he was sure his “sister” would love it, and set out for Newgate. It was now almost noon, and while he doubted Julia would begrudge him a few pence to spend on a modest meal, his stomach roiled at the thought of eating while she sat alone in a dark, cold cell awaiting her execution. She deserved, at the very least, someone to keep vigil with her, and he resolved to fill this rôle, acknowledging at the same time his own selfish desire to spend every possible minute in her company.
As he approached the prison, he tucked the bundle of secondhand clothing under his arm and surveyed his surroundings for some alley or court in which he could put on the gown without being seen. This task was made considerably more difficult by the crowds amassing about the gallows. The size of the mob did not surprise him; the fact that it had assembled so early, fully three hours before the show was to begin, did. Unless, of course, Julia’s was not the only execution to take place that day. He wondered if that might explain why her hanging had been delayed. More to the point, he wondered if it might somehow be turned to her advantage.
“Who’s it for?” Pickett asked one bystander, jerking his thumb in the direction of the gibbet.
His potential informant spat on the ground, narrowly missing Pickett’s shoes. “A fine lady, so they say. Killed ’er ’usband,” he added significantly, drawing the flat of one hand horizontally across his throat in gruesome imitation.
“But that isn’t until three o’clock,” Pickett pointed out. To be sure, public hangings were a popular entertainment amongst a certain set, but surely such a crowd so early was excessive, even for a case that had generated as much attention as the Fieldhurst murder had done.
“Where’d you get such an idea as that?” the man asked, regarding Pickett with mild curiosity. “It’s to take place at noon. Ought to be comin’ out any minute now—here she is! No, wait, it’s only the ’angman.”
His face fell as the figure mounting the steps to the scaffold proved to be, not the notorious murderess, but the man charged with meting out her punishment. Unlike his fictitious counterparts on the stages of Covent Garden or Drury Lane, he wore no black hood to conceal his identity, but acknowledged with a nod several of those in the front who cheered his appearance.
Pickett did not linger to argue the point, but pushed his way through the crowd until he reached the door of the prison and stumbled inside. Ignoring the shouts of the keeper, he ran across the central hall and down the corridor that led to the cell where she was being held.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the guard. “Is she still in there? Let me in!”
With maddening slowness, the guard inserted a key in the door and pushed it open. “Won’t do ye any good,” he said with a philosophical shrug.
Pickett, blinking in the unaccustomed darkness, very quickly came to the same conclusion. The cell was empty of all save for a small rectangle of folded paper lying on the dirty cot. He crossed the room in three strides and picked it up.
“So you’re Mr. Pickett, are ye?” the guard asked with no great urgency. “She said ye’d be comin’ back. Left that for ye.”
Pickett did not have to be told twice. Before the words were out of the guard’s mouth, he had unfolded the paper with hands that shook, and squinted to make out the words in the dying light of the brazier.
Dear Mr. Pickett, she had written, I am truly humbled by your sacrifice, but I must not allow you to make it. By the time you read these words, I will have departed this world for the next, where I know I will be exonerated of the crime of which I am judged to be guilty. I shall meet my fate with more courage, knowing that I had with me at the end the truest friend any person could ask for. Whatever the fate of your own Julia, I hope she knew what a treasure was hers.
It was signed Julia Fieldhurst.
“If you want a place with a good view, you’d best be getting out there,” the guard said. “Won’t be long now.”
Pickett didn’t wait to ask whether the time of the execution had been changed, or to inform the man that a good view of the proceedings was the very last thing he wanted. The note slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor as he raced back down the corridor and out of the prison. The crowd had grown, if not larger, then certainly louder, shouting jeers and catcalls at the slight, pale figure who slowly mounted the steps to the scaffold. Her hands were shackled together at the wrists and held before her, so that when the guard escorting her stepped on the hem of her gown and caused her to stumble, she had no way of righting herself. The guard hauled her upright just before she landed in the arms of an eager spectator, whose neighbors offered bawdy suggestions as to what he might have done with her had her escort not intervened. The same shackles that had prevented her from breaking her fall also denied her any way of protecting herself from the rotten fruits and vegetables hurled at her by various persons in the crowd, some of whom had come armed with overripe produce for just such a purpose, while others were obliged to purchase their missiles from an apple seller who somehow contrived to move freely amongst the mob in spite of the press of humanity all around her.
An apple seller...
“You!” Pickett shouted, pushing his way through to her. He gripped her shoulder and pulled her roughly around to face him. “You told me she was in no danger!”
“I said she was in no immediate danger,” she corrected him. “You were worried about her being out on the street without a roof over her head, and I told you she was in no immediate danger. And nor was she. Few places are more secure than a prison cell, don’t you think?”
“You lied to me!” he insisted. “You knew very well what I—and now it’s too late—” He glanced at the bundle of clothing he still carried, uselessly, under his arm.
“It wouldn’t have worked, you know,” she told him, not without sympathy.
“Very likely not. But I had to try.” He looked up at the scaffold, where Julia stood, still as a statue and just as white, while the hangman fitted the noose over her head. “I still have to try.”
The apple woman shook her head. “You won’t change anything. How could you? You were never born.”
“I have to try,” he said again, shoving the bundle of clothes at her and turning away to reach up and grip the edge of the scaffold floor with both hands.
“But why should you bother, when you know you’ll fail?”
It made him angry, that, after lying to him about Julia’s safety, she would delay him now with stupid questions when at any moment old Jack Ketch would give the signal and the platform would drop, Julia would fall, and the rope would tighten about her neck.
“Because if I don’t do it, no one else will!” he shot back, and hoisted himself up onto the scaffold.
“Correct answer, Mr. Pickett,” she murmured with a nod of approval, as a shriek went up from the crowd at the appearance of a new player upon the scene.
If Pickett heard her at all, he had no time to respond, for he had all he could handle defending himself against the guard’s attempts to push him off. Having gained a foothold, he scrambled up and rose to his feet just as the toe of the man’s boot connected with his chin, cracking his teeth together with enough force to make him see stars. Although he stood on the scaffold, Pickett had not yet straightened to his full height, and now he turned that inferior position to his advantage, driving his shoulder into the guard’s belly and lifting the man right off his feet. He turned back to the edge of the scaffold and dumped the guard off and into the arms of some of the same men who had so crudely expressed their willingness to receive the prisoner in just such a way.
Pickett didn’t wait to see if they were equally eager to bestow their attentions on the guard, for he now had the hangman to contend with. This individual had been pulling a white cloth hood over Julia’s head, but upon hearing the fracas behind him, he abandoned the job half-finished and rushed to the aid of the vanquished guard.
Although the executioner’s job no longer required the brawn of the axe-wielding headsman of days past, his contemporary counterpart proved himself more than equal to the task, pummeling Pickett about first the belly and then the head, driving him back until the only escape from the onslaught was the edge of the scaffold and the mob below. Their enthusiastic shouts of encouragement informed Pickett that, if he were to jump, he would find a sympathetic welcome. Still, it was an action he refused to take; his withdrawal would leave Julia alone with the hangman, who would no doubt pick up his interrupted task exactly where he had left off.
And then, just when it appeared that Pickett would be forced off the scaffold will he or nill he, a pair of slender black-clad arms, hands shackled together at the wrists, looped themselves over the hangman’s head and jerked back, digging the chain links into the fleshy part of his neck. The executioner uttered a strangled cry and began clawing frantically at the garotte about his throat.
“My lady?” Pickett panted, staring in stunned disbelief at this hitherto unsuspected penchant for violence on the part of his gentle bride.
“Run, Mr. Pickett!” she urged. “I don’t know how long I can hold him!” Even as she spoke, his attacker fell to his knees, red-faced and gurgling.
Pickett showed no sign of having heard her entreaties, much less obeying them. “I think—I think you’d better let him go now.”
She did, and the hangman lurched over onto his side, hitting the floor of the scaffold with a hollow thunk.
Pickett didn’t know how long the man would remain unconscious, and didn’t wait to find out. “You’ve got to get away from here before he comes ’round,” he said.
Already footsteps pounded on the stairs, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before reinforcements were upon them. He grabbed Julia’s arm and pulled her to the edge of the scaffold—not in the same spot where he had dispatched the guard, but to an adjacent side, where a cluster of blowsy women cheered this unexpected turn of events, no doubt filled with admiration and envy for one who had not only rid herself of an unsatisfactory husband, but who also appeared to be about to cheat the hangman.
“But—the mob—” Julia protested, glancing down at the sea of upraised faces.
“They’re on your side now,” he assured her. As the boards beneath his feet trembled with the approaching menace, he picked Julia up by her arms and held her out over the void. “Remember, Denmark Street. Number seven.”
“But—you—”
“I love you, Julia,” he said, and dropped her neatly into the crowd.
She looked up at him as she fell, and her wide, startled gaze was the last thing he saw before a cudgel struck him on the back of the head. Everything went dark, and Pickett knew no more.